Word: jolson
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...light shines best on Peter Allen at Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall, and he knows it. In 1981, before seven sellout audiences, the campy Australian crooner rode onto the Radio City stage atop a camel This time he offers an affectionate if glitzy tribute to Al Jolson. There are 37 musicians, 36 Rockettes and a 40-ft. staircase for Allen to prance upon As a dancer, Allen makes up in perspiration what he lacks in locomotion. Is he afraid of falling from those steps? Said he: "There are 36 girls to catch...
...film is well-received, but history turns nasty on Abel Gance. Six months after Napoleon, Al Jolson does a little softshoe number; talkies are in, Polyvision is out. In desperation and disgust, Gance burns part of the footage. Who cares now where the life of the Corsican Eagle ends up? The reels are dispersed across the globe...
...Angeles. The New York City-born Jessel became a vaudeville headliner with a routine in which he held a telephone conversation with his mother. In 1925 he won fame on Broadway in The Jazz Singer, only to lose the film role-and a place in movie history -to Al Jolson. He went on to produce a string of Hollywood movie musicals before hitting his stride as a master of ceremonies and fund raiser. A superpatriot who liked to wear a ribbon-bedecked U.S.O. "uniform" of his own devising, Jessel boasted friendships with five Presidents and took credit for inventing...
...glossy reflection of Diamond's life and sometimes troubled times. But the movie does pull off at least one tricky proposition: it finally and snugly tucks Neil Diamond inside a tradition. He is revealed as a rouser, a showman, a kind of bandmaster of the American mainstream. Like Jolson's, even Diamond's slickest movements seem sincere. The stuff may be corny, but it's never prefab. Neil leans into the Kol Nidre as if it were a sacred version of his sound-track anthem for Jonathan Livingston Seagull. One may question his taste...
...from story (nice Jewish boy brings down paternal wrath by forsaking tradition and trying to make it big in show biz) to score (love songs, fun songs, even marching songs), is stubbornly vintage. Diamond even pops up in blackface for a fast comic turn; about the only act of Jolson's that he doesn't try is going down on one knee...